The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945

Pre-1941: Ostrovno, village, Beshenkovichi raion, Vitebsk oblast’, Belorussian SSR; 1941–1944: Ostrowno, Rayon Beschenkowitschi, Rear Area, Army Group Center (rückwärtiges Heeresgebiet Mitte); post-1991: Astrouna, Beshankovichy raen, Vitsebsk voblasts’, Republic of Belarus

Ostrovno is located 20 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of Beshenkovichi. In 1939, fewer than 300 Jews lived in the village of Ostrovno.

The XXXIX Corps of the 3rd Panzer Group captured Ostrovno in early July 1941. Before their arrival, about half of the Jewish population of the village managed to evacuate or flee to the east. From August 1941 onward, the village came under the authority of Rear Area, Army Group Center.

On July 19, 1941, the Germans ordered the establishment of an open ghetto in Ostrovno. The ghetto consisted of 10 wooden houses on one side of the main street; it was not fenced. On the day of the resettlement, a young Jew who refused to move into the ghetto was shot and killed. On September 30, 1941, the Jews of Ostrovno were killed for “hostile behavior and insubordination to orders.” Einsatzgruppe B, which reported this, indicated having shot 169 people. Immediately after the mass shooting, the Germans organized the sale of Jewish belongings to local peasants for food.¹ According to a survivor, after the liquidation of the ghetto, the authorities organized a feast in the town: “People drank [liquor], ate, danced and kissed one another.”² The same survivor stated that Jewish/non-Jewish relations deteriorated under the occupation; for example, a Belorussian family denounced a Jew who came to them and asked to be hidden. She herself narrowly escaped being denounced by a former kolkhoz chairman in a nearby village, to which she fled after the mass shooting in Ostrovno.